5 Data-backed Tips for Better Phone-based Sales Presentations

Let’s start off today’s post with a quick poll. When doing sales presentations, which format do you prefer: in person or over the phone?

My experience tells me that salespeople tend to be evenly split on this one, but they somewhat lean slightly toward meeting prospects in person. Face-to-face meetings let sales folks put their people skills to use and allow more time for conversing with the prospect. More importantly, in-person presentations enable salespeople to read prospects and get to know them even better from visual cues.

When you’re meeting prospects face-to-face, it’s fairly easy to get a feel for how interested (or disinterested) they really are. Once a prospect slumps down onto the chair with eyes wandering and chin resting on one hand, these are dead giveaways you’re losing your prospect’s attention—and that you better switch gears or risk blowing up the deal.

You obviously won’t get this level of visual feedback during phone-based presentations. Sales meetings done over the phone only provide salespeople verbal clues on whether or not a prospect is really into your conversation.

That’s a huge information gap, considering that 93% of communication is nonverbal.

Still, phone presentations play a key role in the selling process. There’s just no substitute for the convenience and efficiency that phone calls deliver. In some cases, for example, the telephone remains the most viable option for many companies that can’t afford their own field sales team or businesses whose target prospects are too far away.

That’s why it’s crucial to refine your phone-based presentation strategy. Conventional sales wisdom offers a ton of useful advice on substance and delivery that you should definitely pay attention to. But data to support (or disprove) these best practices are hard to come by—until now.

The data scientists at Gong, an AI-enabled language platform for improving sales team performance, crunched the numbers from over 25,500 sales calls earlier this year. Their analysis found some surprising things about many of the sales profession’s time-honored calling tactics. Among other findings, they uncovered several qualities that the best sales calls have in common.

Here’s a rundown of five actionable tips based on Gong’s study that you can (and should) apply to improve results from your phone-based sales presentations:

1) Listen 1.3 times more than you talk

This is prospecting 101, but salespeople seem to have forgotten this lesson. Gong’s research finds that the average sales rep takes up 65% to 75% of the total call time with prospects. Even more importantly, the study reveals that talk-to-listen ratio impacts win rates:

• The ideal talk-to-listen ratio for the most productive sales calls is 43:57.
• Increasing the prospect’s talk time from 22% to 33% significantly improves opportunity win rates.

The numbers speak for themselves. Let your prospects do more of the talking. Just listen.

Relared: A Software Company’s Guide to More Software Clients and More Sales

2) Talk about price 3 to 4 times, but build value first

Gong’s analysis also uncovers a strong correlation between the number of times pricing came up in a sales call and the likelihood of closing the deal. They find the sweet spot to be between 3 and 4 times:

• When reps mention pricing less than three times or more than four times in any given call, win rates decline.
• If price comes up three or four times in a call, that’s a buying signal.

Moreover, there’s the right time to talk about price in a sales call. High-yielding sales calls tend to bring up price-related discussions around the 40- to 49-minute mark. This indicates that top-performing reps build value before talking about price, while low-performing and average reps mention pricing throughout the call.

Related: Ditch that Pitch: The Case Against Selling to First-Time Prospects

3) Ask (11 to 14 questions) and you shall receive

In another analysis (this time involving 519,000 sales calls), Gong’s data science team concludes that there’s a clear relationship between the number of questions a rep asks and his chances of closing the deal.

• Asking 15 to 18 questions during a call is “only marginally more effective” than asking 7 to 10 questions.
• The most productive sales reps ask 11 to 14 questions in a sales call.

So, what type of questions should a rep ask? The research also identifies that questions about your prospect’s business pain points exert the most impact on win rates. Elementary. By that, you should read this later How to Use the 3 Levels of Pain Points for Better Sales Conversations.

4) Distinguish between caution and hesitation

Needless to say, prospects’ responses indicate a sales call’s likely outcome. But some remarks appear to be more telling than others, particularly the following replies to timeline questions:

• If a prospect uses “probably” in a response like “…probably in 2 weeks”, the forecasted time horizon is 73% accurate.
• Answers that resemble “”We need to figure out…” are negatively correlated with win rates.

Responses that indicate caution can imply that your prospect is seriously considering your offer. Responses that suggest hesitation, on the other hand, can mean a lack of interest.

Related: Using Social Signals to Spot Sales-Ready Leads

5) Use language that embraces and soothes

Every sales rep knows that their style and tone matter as much as the message itself. Gong’s findings seem to support this idea. Some specific words and phrases apparently influence a rep’s chances of closing the deal.

• Top-performing reps are 10 times more likely to emphasize collaboration than low performers.
• The most productive salespeople are 5 times more likely to use words and phrases that focus on mitigating risk than other reps.

In other words, reps who focus on collaboration and inspire confidence tend to close the most number of deals.

Related: How To Improve A Lagging Inside Sales Team

The Takeaway

So there you have it, five practical ways to improve phone-based sales presentations backed by solid data. Most of you are probably already following some variations of these best practices, and the study findings cited here only serve to vindicate your calling methods. The most important results, of course, are those generated by your own campaigns. What other tips and tricks do you apply that are supported by hard numbers?

Read the latest updates on The Savvy Marketer’s Blog

Get a targeted sales leads or a sample sales and telemarketing script

Contact us or Dial 888.810.7464

Source: https://www.callboxinc.com/telemarketing/phone-based-sales-presentation-tips/

2023 Buyers Guide

Get Listed

Customer Experience (CX)

Page: 123

1.)	3Fiftynine Branches Improves customer experience by helping find the agent the right information within a click.

2.)

Abacus Cambridge Partners Combining unmatched experience and specialised skills across more than 40 industries and business functions, Abacus works at the intersection of business and technology to help organisations meet their key priorities and create sustainable value for their stakeholders. Headquartered in the United Kingdom and offices in the United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt, Abacus has more than 800 global customers and over 2800 customer-focused employees working in 30+ countries. We offer the following services: Business Process Outsourcing Customer Experience and Customer Relationship Management Enterprise Resource Planning AI & Robotic Process Automation API M... (read more)Combining unmatched experience and specialised skills across more than 40 industries and business functions, Abacus works at the intersection of business and technology to help organisations meet their key priorities and create sustainable value for their stakeholders. Headquartered in the United Kingdom and offices in the United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt, Abacus has more than 800 global customers and over 2800 customer-focused employees working in 30+ countries. We offer the following services: Business Process Outsourcing Customer Experience and Customer Relationship Management Enterprise Resource Planning AI & Robotic Process Automation API Management and Microservices Human Capital Management Identity & Access Management Application Development Enterprise Cloud Data Management & Analytics

3.)

Alvaria Alvaria CXP Alvaria CXP empowers enterprises to deploy contact center & customer self-service solutions on voice (IVR), text/messaging (chatbots), and mobile channels (disposable apps) with a design-once-deploy-anywhere approach. CXP Pro speeds up time-to-market, lowers customer service cost, lowers average handling time (AHT), frees agents from repetitive tasks, improves the customer experience through 24/7 availability, and increases first contact resolution (FCR). Deploy on-premise or in the cloud.

4.)

AmplifAI AmplifAI Performance Acceleration for Sales & Service AmplifAI integrates all contact center data sources, and uses AI to drive personas which capture the metrics and behaviors of high performing agents, and then delivers actions to the organization to replicate the high performers. This process drives a sustainable and consistent agent improvement model that allows for faster speed to proficiency and improved performance across the call center resulting in improved productivity, sales and customer experience.

5.)

ARC Quality Solutions Contact Center Observation Services Remote Contact Center Monitoring Programs - Working closely with your staff every day can often take complete objectivity out of the picture when trying to evaluate quality and agent performance. Telephone/Email/Chat Mystery Shopping - A well-planned mystery shopping program can yield invaluable data about how your customers view the quality of your contact center service interactions. Competitor Analysis - ARC Competitive Analysis Programs are designed to objectively compare your company with your competition. Customer Satisfaction Surveys - ARC’s Customer Satisfaction Survey programs are designed to provide you with an objective measuring tool for gauging the level of customer sa... (read more)Remote Contact Center Monitoring Programs - Working closely with your staff every day can often take complete objectivity out of the picture when trying to evaluate quality and agent performance. Telephone/Email/Chat Mystery Shopping - A well-planned mystery shopping program can yield invaluable data about how your customers view the quality of your contact center service interactions. Competitor Analysis - ARC Competitive Analysis Programs are designed to objectively compare your company with your competition. Customer Satisfaction Surveys - ARC’s Customer Satisfaction Survey programs are designed to provide you with an objective measuring tool for gauging the level of customer satisfaction with your products, services, and contact center interactions. One-To-One Coaching and Onsite Training - Our contact center coaching and training programs focus on customer service skills training and specific quality issues identified for improvement.

6.)

BravaTrak BravaTrak BravaTrak is the High-Performance Coaching System for contact centres. It helps you increase customer experience while improving employee engagement. It does this, by: - Providing you with a customer experience coaching framework - Turning your managers into High-Performance Coaches - Giving you real-time visibility of your managers’ coaching activity We’ve refined this system over the past 27 years, working with over 50 large organisations. It’s been tested and proven across inbound sales and service, and outbound sales and retention. Whatever the nature of your channel, BravaTrak can help you avoid missing your customer experience targets, while improving employee engagement.

7.)

Britannic Technologies INBOX INBOX: A place for every digital interaction! INBOX allows any digital interaction to be blended into single or multiple queues with zero service interruption with implementation. Organising them by business context with smart tagging and search filters, the events can be automatically prioritised and categorised. Automating the route to the correct agent or business orchestration rule. It also connects with all your social media channels, enabling you to respond and route accordingly in real-time.

8.)

Calabrio Calabrio ONE Workforce Optimization Calabrio is revolutionizing the way enterprises engage their customers with Calabrio ONE, a unified workforce optimization (WFO) suite—including call recording, quality management, workforce management, voice-of-the-customer analytics, and advanced reporting—that records, captures and analyzes customer interactions to provide a single view of the customer, and improve the overall agent and customer experience.

9.)

Call Adapt Soundboard Software Call Adapt is a cloud-based digital soundboard application designed for contact centers. It works with any type of call and integrates with your existing dialer system. Powered by smart audio technology, Call Adapt gives your agents the ability to converse with customers in real time using programmed keyboard shortcuts. The result is perfect pitch delivery and less time spent on repetitive tasks.

10.)

Callsultant Outsourced Contact Center Services, Contact Center Consultancy Services We offer a wide range of inbound and outbound services including; -Sales, lead generation, market research, fundraising, appointment setting, collections, telemarketing, customer service, help desk, order taking, technical support. In addition, we provide omni channel support services such as chat & email support along with back office processing services such as transcription, data entry, Order management, E-Commerce order follow-up.

11.)

ComSys S.A. CFront for Digital Communication Channels CFront by Comsys is a state-of-the-art application that enriches contact centers with digital communication and collaboration capabilities. CFront is natively compatible with Aspect Unified IP and Cisco Unified Contact Center (UCCE/UCCX) platforms and connects them with all the major communication channels. Comsys is a provider of οmnichannel customer engagement solutions that assist companies around the world in delivering unique customer experiences. For the last 15 years, Comsys designs and implements complex projects for clients from the outsourcing, financial services, telecommunications, and retail sectors. Comsys enjoys strategic partnerships with technology vendors like Cisco®, Aspe... (read more)CFront by Comsys is a state-of-the-art application that enriches contact centers with digital communication and collaboration capabilities. CFront is natively compatible with Aspect Unified IP and Cisco Unified Contact Center (UCCE/UCCX) platforms and connects them with all the major communication channels. Comsys is a provider of οmnichannel customer engagement solutions that assist companies around the world in delivering unique customer experiences. For the last 15 years, Comsys designs and implements complex projects for clients from the outsourcing, financial services, telecommunications, and retail sectors. Comsys enjoys strategic partnerships with technology vendors like Cisco®, Aspect Software®, and Microsoft® for the delivery of innovative interaction management and contact center optimization solutions.

12.)

Conectys Conectys delivers a wide range of customer experience solutions including customer service, technical support and virtual assistant solutions. We provide omnichannel customer support services through phone, email, web tickets, live chat, social media, good old fax, and the latest mobile apps. From switchboard solutions, to customer and technical support, we have the outsourced call center service package to fit your requirements.

13.)

Connex One Omnichannel The Connex One Customer Engagement Platform enables inbound and outbound interactions through a secure, cloud-based, omnichannel engine. The feature rich platform offers everything from AI and Automation to Workforce Optimisation, consolidating the customer journey into one place.

14.)

Consilium Software Consilium UniRSM™ Many contact centers are providing critical services in these challenging times, with agents not only having to handle new customer situations, but also with agents often working alone from home without the face-to-face support of their supervisors and managers, who may also be working remotely. Trained and proficient agents translate into happy customers, with monitoring and coaching playing an important role in developing agents’ abilities. Consilium UniRSM™ is a perfect solution for this, where supervisors can perform real-time quality monitoring and coaching by dialing in from any phone with secure, role-based access. Has your contact center moved to Cisco Jabber softphones for agents,... (read more)Many contact centers are providing critical services in these challenging times, with agents not only having to handle new customer situations, but also with agents often working alone from home without the face-to-face support of their supervisors and managers, who may also be working remotely. Trained and proficient agents translate into happy customers, with monitoring and coaching playing an important role in developing agents’ abilities. Consilium UniRSM™ is a perfect solution for this, where supervisors can perform real-time quality monitoring and coaching by dialing in from any phone with secure, role-based access. Has your contact center moved to Cisco Jabber softphones for agents, moved to the Cisco Remote Agent over Broadband approach, or using a Cisco Unified Communications Mobile and Remote Access deployment (MRA), or perhaps enabled agents to use their mobile phones for the voice endpoint using Cisco Unified Mobile Agent (CUMA)? Consilium UniRSM™ has a real-time monitoring solution for all contact center deployment models, and works with Cisco UCCE, PCCE, HCS-CC, UCCX and even for CUCM-only collaboration environments. Apart from an IVR dial-in method, UniRSM™ also has a mobile and desktop-based WebViewer version. UniRSM™ is the preferred choice of contact centers globally who are seeking real-time monitoring and coaching functionality as a migration option for the end-of-sale Cisco Remote Silent Monitoring (RSM) product. The new UniRSM™ architecture achieves this with endpoint-based monitoring where built-in-bridge (BiB) is supported by the agent’s voice endpoint for silent monitoring, or with trunk-side monitoring where SIPREC is used for duplication of media at the Cisco CUBE (the latter applying for monitoring agents without BiB or when silent monitoring is not supported, such as when using Jabber over MRA.) Continuous improvement is only possible with effort, so monitoring and coaching are not really a nice-to-have, but a must-have. Call monitoring helps contact centers improve by helping new and struggling agents become better, and turning good agents into great agents. The agents improve, the contact center excels, the company grows, and customers see visible results and become net promoters. With UniRSM™, everyone wins.

15.)

ContactEngine ContactEngine connects conversations across entire customer journeys with One Voice delivering exceptional CX and demonstrable business value for organizations around the world. ContactEngine provides proactive customer service by helping your customers through the channels they’re most comfortable with. It aims to contact your customer before your customer contacts you.

16.)

Creative Virtual V-Person™ Creative Virtual's V-Person virtual agent/chatbot technology and V-Person Live Chat™ bring together humans and AI to create conversations with customers and employees across touchpoints in a seamless, personalised way and at large scale. V-Person conversational AI solutions can be deployed across any channel (web, mobile, social media, messaging apps, voice, IVR, smart speakers, kiosks, contact centre, HR, service desk) in over 35 languages. V-Person virtual agent/chatbot and live chat implementations are underpinned by V-Portal™, our knowledge management, workflow management and business intelligence orchestration platform. We use a hybrid approach of natural language processing (NLP),... (read more)Creative Virtual's V-Person virtual agent/chatbot technology and V-Person Live Chat™ bring together humans and AI to create conversations with customers and employees across touchpoints in a seamless, personalised way and at large scale. V-Person conversational AI solutions can be deployed across any channel (web, mobile, social media, messaging apps, voice, IVR, smart speakers, kiosks, contact centre, HR, service desk) in over 35 languages. V-Person virtual agent/chatbot and live chat implementations are underpinned by V-Portal™, our knowledge management, workflow management and business intelligence orchestration platform. We use a hybrid approach of natural language processing (NLP), human curation of content, AI and machine comprehension for continuous improvement and reliability of our solutions. We offer flexible integration options and unlimited customisation by channel, product, business unit, user profile and device. We also provide options for hosting on-premise, in the cloud and in a private cloud. Our experienced team provides consultation sessions to build a business case, develop a conversational AI strategy and improve existing chatbot projects. The team delivers best practice expertise and guidance on implementation, ongoing development and optimisation to enable long-term success. Options are available for a managed service, to manage the solution in-house and for a combined approach.

17.)

CTMA New Zealand Ltd Customer experience assessments and reviews • Customer experience baseline studies • Leadership training, coaching and events Establishing a customer experience baseline: Establishing a customer experience baseline helps to identify and quantify current sources of customer dissatisfaction, estimate potential returns on service investment and sets customer-driven improvement priorities for action and change. CTMA’s customer experience assessments and baseline studies help to identify, justify and prioritise strategic and tactical improvement opportunities, and forge a solid foundation for change. Leadership training, coaching and events: The new urgency to get customer experience right, in a world recovering from a global health crisis, is placing even more emphasis on giving people the right skills, to do... (read more)Establishing a customer experience baseline: Establishing a customer experience baseline helps to identify and quantify current sources of customer dissatisfaction, estimate potential returns on service investment and sets customer-driven improvement priorities for action and change. CTMA’s customer experience assessments and baseline studies help to identify, justify and prioritise strategic and tactical improvement opportunities, and forge a solid foundation for change. Leadership training, coaching and events: The new urgency to get customer experience right, in a world recovering from a global health crisis, is placing even more emphasis on giving people the right skills, to do the right things, at the right time. In response to this challenge, in addition to our in-person services, we are now delivering our leadership programme, workshops and one-on-one executive planning and coaching sessions online - directly to you and your team - in your own meeting room, at your own desk or home office, in the form of live, group, or personalised online events and programmes. And, you can even bring our podcast with you on your walk, jog or drive. Managing customer experience transformations: Focusing enterprise energy on achieving customer-driven outcomes for success, needs determined leadership, a strong customer-driven framework, and an openness to obtaining external support and guidance where required to save time and costs and avoid making some of the mistakes that others may have made in the past. CTMA’s frameworks and consulting services help to establish transition roadmaps and plans, and provide the drive to bring about the positive change to turn your customer experience vision into a customer experience reality. Driving ongoing CX performance: Ongoing insights from customer experience should act as a feedback control mechanism to maintain service quality and drive continuous improvement. CTMA’s ongoing measurement programmes, underpinned by our leadership coaching and support, provide the disciplined management framework and tools needed to turn ongoing customer experience measurement, and customer feedback, into management actions.

18.)

CUSTOMER SQUARE CROSSCRM.CX Cross CRM is powered by Customer-Square,french firm specializing in customer-relationship and contact centers, since 2008 we help companies with a large customer capital to maintain, and develop. Originally for our own needs, the CRM analytics services and Quality Monitoring provided by Customer-Square, we began to put CROSS-CRM.COM on the market in 2013. CROSS-CRM manages daily interconnection with your CRM tools to centralize data and analyse CX on all channels, and is able to provide deep analytics insights. The platform also provides Quality Monitoring, Speech Analytics and Survey tools to get a 360 view of your customer interactions. We ended this features list in 2008 by add... (read more)Cross CRM is powered by Customer-Square,french firm specializing in customer-relationship and contact centers, since 2008 we help companies with a large customer capital to maintain, and develop. Originally for our own needs, the CRM analytics services and Quality Monitoring provided by Customer-Square, we began to put CROSS-CRM.COM on the market in 2013. CROSS-CRM manages daily interconnection with your CRM tools to centralize data and analyse CX on all channels, and is able to provide deep analytics insights. The platform also provides Quality Monitoring, Speech Analytics and Survey tools to get a 360 view of your customer interactions. We ended this features list in 2008 by adding a Learning Management System dedicated to agents and call center teams. Our Modules are CRM Dataviz, Cross-Mining, Listener QM, Listener Survey and Listener LMS.

19.)

Customer Touch Point Engage To Influence Customer Touch Point specialises in long-term and instant impact customer experience solutions for organisations worldwide, providing the tools and support they need to deliver effortless customer experiences. We are also the brand behind the powerful Engage to Influence™ methodology, which sits at the core of every single customer project. By delivering real-time customer insight; designing customer journeys to positively influence behaviour; and implementing end-to-end technology solutions that provide a seamless experience across all channels, we enable our clients to improve customer experiences and reduce cost of contact at the same time. Our solutions include: • Contact Cen... (read more)Customer Touch Point specialises in long-term and instant impact customer experience solutions for organisations worldwide, providing the tools and support they need to deliver effortless customer experiences. We are also the brand behind the powerful Engage to Influence™ methodology, which sits at the core of every single customer project. By delivering real-time customer insight; designing customer journeys to positively influence behaviour; and implementing end-to-end technology solutions that provide a seamless experience across all channels, we enable our clients to improve customer experiences and reduce cost of contact at the same time. Our solutions include: • Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) • Customer feedback software • Customer journey mapping • Telephony & IVR • Live chat • SMS • Email • Social media monitoring • Dynamic FAQs • Real-time and post-call text analytics . Our solutions in more detail Customer feedback Our customer feedback software solutions include multi-channel surveys, post-call IVR surveys, live wallboards, text analytics, SMS & digital feedback campaigns. Customer journey mapping Customer journey mapping looks at the entire customer journey, from the first customer interaction to the last. A detailed audit of the customer journey, using our Engage to Influence™ methodology, alongside our customer feedback audit and post-call analytics tool, will pin-point where and how we can make changes to improve customer contact and engagement. Telephony & IVR Telephony, touch tone and Natural Language IVR services include journey audits and re-design, scripting, automation, tone of voice and professional audio recording. Customer experience technology Our CCaaS is a true omnichannel contact management system across voice, email, chat, SMS and social media channel that delivers a single view of how the customer communicates. Real-time and post-call analytics Rael-time and post-call analytics analyses every voice call in detail, breaking every word and sound down into thousands of markers, delivering detailed and accurate business insight as it’s happening. Using our real-time and post-call analytics solution we can quickly and very accurately analyse thousands of calls to uncover patterns of behaviours, customer sentiment and the true reason for their call. This in turn enables you to achieve operational objectives, makes your more compliant and helps you sell more. Professional audio & music services We offer a range of professional, multi-lingual voice and music services for phone, IVR and on-hold, as well as background music in restaurants, shops and other customer environments

20.)

CustomerCount CustomerCount is a feature-rich, cloud based survey solution providing intuitive real-time reporting, fast turnaround on requested updates, and detailed and dynamic data gathering capabilities to support process improvement efforts, build customer loyalty and improve your bottom line. Developed and managed by Mobius Vendor Partners, CustomerCount was initially designed for the timeshare and contact center industries and is now used by organizations across numerous different vertical markets and industries.

 

Page: 123

View more from Callbox

Recent Blog Posts:

Sales Call Success with A Perfect Telemarketing Script	June 27, 2018
Track These KPIs and Learn How to Increase Sales Call Volume [VIDEO]	May 17, 2018
‘Don't Talk With Your Mouth Full!’ and Other Sales Call Tips from Mom	May 10, 2018
4 Sales Call Rapport-Building Techniques That AI Can't Yet Do [VIDEO]	April 10, 2018
6 SMART Calling Essentials For Better Telemarketing Results	April 4, 2018
The Digital Marketer’s Guide to Telemarketing Performance Metrics	March 7, 2018
5 Data-backed Tips for Better Phone-based Sales Presentations	November 10, 2017
What Makes an Outstanding Telemarketing Campaign [for All Types of Industry]	October 11, 2017
6 Ways a SMART Telemarketing Platform Doubles Sales Productivity	September 19, 2017
Going Beyond the 500% ROI: How to Integrate Telemarketing with Other Channels	September 5, 2017